The 2012 campaign is heating up and we can see the outlines of an impending us/them class war. But in our strange 21st-century world, lots of crazy things blur the president’s 1%/99% divide. We watch the super-rich struggle for ever creative ways of blowing their money to distinguish themselves from the rest of us (cf. Johnny Depp’s [$50 million in income last year] hosting of a creepy, expensive costume Halloween party at the White House, in the style of the idle 18th-century French court).

Meanwhile we see the “poor” near rioting over buying the first few pairs of Michael Jordan $200 sneakers, or mobbing for big screen televisions on holiday shopping sale outings. Are we mad that too many are really poor, or that too many are simply unequal, in the sense of not having what “they” enjoy — a “they,” however, that cannot quite figure out how all their money leads to all that much better a life? I am sorry, Mr. Obama, but for all the Vegas-junketeering, no-time-for-profit rhetoric, I simply do not believe the one-seventh on food stamps, or the 48% who pay no income tax, are suffering like the starving 19th-century Norwegian immigrants on the windswept Dakota plains of Ole Rolvaag’s epic Giants in the Earth.

Capital for What?

I am not suggesting that poverty or life in the lower middle class is not tough, only that in comparison to past centuries, hardly as tough. Being “poor” is certainly closer and closer to those for whom life is pretty good — and yet this blending of the classes is entirely ignored by our class warriors in Washington. Life in “poor” nearby Selma is far different from Warren Buffett’s. Or maybe it isn’t really — again, in the sense that I’m not sure he bathes, eats, dresses, or goes to the doctor in ways we out here cannot.

In the year 2012, would a retiree be living better off the interest of $1 million — saved over a lifetime of work as a self-employed contractor — or would the beneficiary of an average public pension? Would you prefer to be working at 62 at the DMV making $50,000, or a near-retired real estate agent, in a down market, at 62 surviving on the “earnings” from the $450,000 in your 401(k)?

Suddenly, the income from stored wealth seems almost nonexistent. I speak to a few affluent groups and often afterwards hear that those who retired in their early sixties, and who are now in their mid- or late-eighties, have no income. You say, tough luck? But most are gradually consuming their capital and selling off assets — a great leveling effect of the ages. (Just wait until the second-term Obama administration decides that non-interest-earning $300,000 in the bank qualifies you as rich, and thus ineligible for need-based Social Security payments: it is not just that you will be punished for playing by the rules, but that the rules themselves do not matter much any more.)

The value of capital not spent is in decline. The interest on it earns seldom over 2-3%. It is lost easily in today’s wild Wall Street. It won’t show much immediate growth invested in a depressed housing market. Saved capital declines faster in value than the interest it earns — given the recent soaring prices of food and fuel. What is so good about saving up for retirement? To try to get a once despised 6% on your savings is to risk it all. If the president had his way, the capital that earned almost no interest would be taxed away at death anyway.

Debt—What Debt?

In the car today, I heard the usual con ads on the radio. Got problems with the IRS? No problem, we can renegotiate that away. Too much credit card borrowing? No problem, we can settle it at half what you owe. That mortgage of yours unfair? No problem; we can renegotiate it for you and forgive some of the debt. Often there is a vague reference to some federal program that some of us are eligible for. Lately I heard ads from the Department of Agriculture, reminding me that if I belong to some such minority group, I can sue if I felt I was discriminated against. (Who are the “they” with all the money to forgive all the debt?) Are we back to the Catiline conspiracy and calls to “forgive debt and redistribute property”?

When In Doubt—Sue!

Then there are the law firm ads: have you suffered whiplash injuries, been turned down for a job, worked with asbestos, had a bad drug reaction to brand X, been discriminated against, had a pass made at you, fallen on a banana peel? If so, the local John Edwards-like law firm will sue on your behalf. Fresno has just announced that its latest lawsuit settlement has pretty much exhausted the city’s self-insured fund for the year (but is it not month 1 of 2012, with 11 more to go?), with over a dozen other claims pending. What happens when we all become litigants and we run out of targets? Who is to play Germany to our Greece?

Like in Petronius’s Croton, where there were lots of con artists and far too few wealthy to con, things get ugly.

Need-based Revenge

So in today’s need-based society of the 21st-century, is it all that worth it to be a saver and an owner? During her early and middle working years, Sister A saves $100,000 for her two children’s college educations. Sister B makes less per year, and can save nothing for her two. Will a college be more likely to help the children of A or B — if they earn the same grades and test scores?

While no one would like to reward more success with more money, when the college subsidizes B, but not A, is it doing redistribution at both ends — charging the full amount for those who can pay, and then using the resulting profits (and colleges do profit these days) to help those who can’t? All of which raises an interesting question — why save in the first place and price yourself out of the need-based, subsidized tuition market? My point again is not to object to magnanimity, but to object mightily to those who slander a system that is more egalitarian and generous than any in civilization’s history.

Race-based quotas help as well. I was in a local bank the other day. The teller, whom I know and like a great deal, has a gifted child, though one probably without the very top scores to automatically get into Stanford, where she wants her child to enroll. She, at least in part, is of Mexican-American heritage, and so asked me to what degree her surname might help. Other than “a lot,” I tried to answer that question in a serious fashion, listing comparative preferences given to minorities, athletes, brilliant violinists, and, of course, marginally A-students who are the children of very wealthy and very generous Stanford alumni (who perhaps have no better test scores or grades than the bank teller’s daughter). I believe that I answered her honestly with, “I think an Hispanic surname offers about the edge of a Stanford insider whose parents give $100,000 per year.” I have no idea whether that is provable, or whether it is right, wrong, or irrelevant. My only interest, other than in trying to give her good advice to prep her daughter for admission, was reminding her that in our postmodern society there are all sorts of ways of nullifying the traditional advantages of wealth.

In this regard, another of the many Punjabi immigrants I know complained that, in the best north Clovis schools, graduating in the top 4% is hard (e.g., too many Punjabis), which means getting into UC Berkeley can be as well (e.g., too many Asians there in general). He asked me whether moving to nearby Parlier (99% Mexican nationals or Mexican-Americans) was a smart move, since he thought it would be far easier for his son, given the number of non-English speakers in Parlier, to graduate in the very top percentiles, which makes it far more likely to win an ensured and reserved slot at Berkeley. As an observer of one supposed minority calculating relative advantage over supposedly others, all I could offer was, “I would consider the pros and cons of that.”

Call Your Lawyer

There was recently some anger at a local gang banger who has been arrested and released over 24 times in the last seven years (or about every 100 days since he turned 18). He is one of the small reasons why anything not tied down in rural Fresno County is stolen. Forget his thefts, his fencing, his weapons charges, or his profits from stealing. Ask instead, who or what was the brilliant legal team that got him out after 24 arrests for these charged felonies? Is there not the dreaded California Three Strikes to overcome? I have a sneaking suspicion that the miscreant had a public defender, or rather a serial number of them, and that they knew the legal labyrinth here better than would Laurence Tribe — and that what he got for free was worth more than what he otherwise might have had to pay $1 million for.

Useless Brands

Sometimes the class blending is more mundane. I went into the Selma Wal-Mart at 7AM and by noon, and after a long drive, walked through Neiman Marcus in the Stanford Shopping Center, 180 miles and a planet away. I was investigating, you see. Was the casual ensemble of pants and shirt at Wal-Mart priced at $25 all that much different from the counterpart priced at over $500 at Neiman Marcus? I saw also children’s outfits that went for $10 in Selma, and not much different ones for $180 in Stanford. Ah, but you connoisseurs object — “Victor, Victor, there are questions here of brand, subtle qualities unnoticed by your bumpkin eye, matters of signature.” Yes, of course. But as far as day-to-day durability and the casual look, I don’t think there is over a $170 difference.

My point for the nth time? In today’s globalized world of cheap Chinese imports, money buys you a constructed status tag, but not commensurate value beyond what the lower classes can ever hope to attain.

We are Not the Cratchits

Try another example. Go to Sizzler and Ruth’s Chris as I did recently. You can easily spend $20 at the former, and $100 at the latter per person. And, yes I know, food at the latter tastes far better, but not $80 per plate better, The thick steak at Chris is not necessarily safer (and may be more unhealthy) than the thin chuck cut at Sizzler. I don’t think the atmosphere at Chris is $80 a plate better than at a boisterous Sizzler. We are not in Dickensian London when the pot-bellied rich ate fat geese and the poor were left picking their bones.

I went into Save Mart this weekend and purchased $70 worth of groceries. In my state and federal tax bracket, that meant I had to earn about $140 for the tab. The person next to me bought $200 with an EBD card. I don’t think she had much of an income (I’ll spare you the details). Was one really in the food-sense rich, the other really poor? Today’s destitute, as in my youth, are not buying huge thirty-pound bags of rice, beans, and flour.

Suddenly Free Health Care?

There is currently a great local controversy over an unfortunate illegal alien who had a tragic intestinal disease and so was treated without cost in the intensive care unit of the Fresno Community Regional Medical Center for over a year. While the exact bill was not released, readers could only imagine the public hit, as ICU is astronomically expensive, as were his over a dozen surgeries. Some commentators cited our society’s shocking lack of universal health care that forced the worker into the free ICU and onto the public dole. Others sighed that such kindness is also unfortunately the road to bankruptcy and suggested that offering 370 days of such care for too many more illegal aliens will break the hospital. But what was lost in the discussion (other than the slightest admission that we are a caring and magnanimous society unlike any in the world) is that the most impoverished among us — someone without education, English, or legality — really did receive millions of dollars of free health care, which was supposed to be impossible before the implementation of Obamacare. And here is another point: I know that when Bill Gates goes into ICU he will get far better care, but not that much far better care, despite his $50 billion advantage.

I recently went through all sorts of delays for a referral to a specialist, and have been waiting 10 days for a prescription medication since the insurance company is waiting for the specialist who has not yet renewed the prescription. Those ahead of me in line at Rite Aid had Medi-Cal/Medicaid cards. They certainly seemed to have far less problems than I did with my private insurance authorization, in the mundane sense that they walked out with their prescriptions, and I did not. Of course, I realize that should I fall over, I would be treated immediately — but would the hospital not in return want my ancestral barn to cover the cost if I could not pay the tab? And if so, what is the value of my ancestral barn anyway?

Knock-Offs

I drove down to Los Angeles in my Accord again not long ago. And once more I was amazed at what people pay for comparable rides in imported luxury cars. For some reason, I got stuck on the 99 behind a new BMW for 50 miles. My car is probably now worth $20,000, the other driver’s probably $75,000. We went the same speed. I had heating; so apparently did he. My windshield wipers worked as well. My exhaust was as clean as his.

When I flew last month in the economy, middle seat across country on a 757, on landing I saw lots of “corporate jet owners” taxiing into LAX. Their ride was far superior to mine — but was it $20 million cleaner, safer, and faster? Were their pilots $20 million better than mine?

For 20 years I taught classics to mostly minority students at CSU Fresno. Given the job market, over the years I hired seven or eight new professors. All had blue-chip degrees and, despite no longer cocooning at Stanford, Berkeley, or Yale, they were delighted that they had a steady job in Fresno, rather than a part-time scramble somewhere else. We modeled our undergraduate language program after what used to be common in the 1960s — Greek and Latin language, literature, and even composition; full auxiliary courses in history, literature in translation, art, and humanities; dozens of yearly independent tutorials in syntax, grammar, and advanced prose composition; insistence on a reading knowledge of German and French. The result was that our graduates got about as good an education in classics or ancient history as did the undergraduate in the tony private liberal arts school or even in the Ivy League, and surely far more attention (I don’t think first-year students at Harvard often borrowed their professor’s pick-up to move). Given that there is an overproduction of PhDs, and given that many of them are unemployed, good, and willing to teach at places like Fresno, and given that minority status is an enormous advantage in getting into the top graduate schools, over the years we placed some 40 students in places like Yale, Brown, Princeton, Stanford, Berkeley, or UCLA. All of which raises the question, would it have been all that much better for any potential classics or ancient history graduate students to pay $50,000 a year at Brown or Swarthmore rather than to attend for free at CSU — at least as far as winning admission to a competitive PhD program?

There are all sorts of insidious leveling effects that we simply do not tally up in our discussion of rich and poor.

The Insidious “Corporate Jet Owner”?

So what is the vast advantage of having more than someone else that so obsesses this administration, as if inequality translates into poverty? A $300 tag on your jeans that a few insiders will think is cool? The ability to have a cheap metal insignia on your car hood and a slightly better feel and drive to it? Granite in your bathroom that makes the water seem nicer than when gushing out of a plastic vanity? A ride in a Gulfstream rather than a Canadian regional jet?

I used to be impressed by some doctors who had cell phones in the late 1980s — or rather, suitcase phones. They had them, I didn’t, because they made $200,000 and I made $23,000. Now, I see farm workers talking on iPhones and ear-jacks while pruning. Are their iPhones that much worse than those of the children of the late Steve Jobs?

The Great Equalization

For all John Edwards’ talk of “two nations,” of Barack Obama’s lifelong effort to demonize “corporate jet owners” and “millionaires and billionaires” (the latter 1000 times wealthier than the former), for all the sociologists and economists who get tenure by writing obscure, clever little essays that few read on insidious class differences, the classes have never been closer. Globalization, rapidly advancing technology, the Chinese exporters, and a huge redistributive government, printing money to service $16 trillion in debt, have all accomplished what bureaucrats and politicos could not: the simulacra of equality. Add with a vast expansion of the money supply, near-zero interest, massive deficits and aggregate debt, huge expansions in entitlements and the federal work force, and fewer and fewer paying income taxes, things can certainly be spread around.

I also say simulacra because few in Selma vacation in Tuscany. But sitting in front of a big-screen TV, with some Italian music on, while watching Rick Steves (with TV sound off) touring Florence seems not all that different from the 28-hour hassle of flying to rural Italy. The former is free; the latter “rich” people alone afford.

Oh, you object: poverty is better gauged by lack of opportunity, of exposure, of the cultivation of the mind. Well, in 1959, it was true only the wealthy in the Bay Area had access to opera, symphony, and good libraries. Out here in rural Selma there were no book stores, a sole tiny library in town, and no cultural enrichment to speak of.

Now? A Google search in about five seconds can give you information about anything. All sorts of sites offer free downloads of the classics. Videos offer any symphonic performance you wish. Computers are cheaper than many video games and big-screen TVs, whose sales after Thanksgiving cause near riots.

In short,we live in an unacknowledged age in which a poor man with a laptop who taps into a free signal at Starbucks has more information at his fingertips than did the Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford just forty years ago.

Surreal Poverty

The dangers of the underclass here in the poorest quadrant of the poorest county in poor California are obesity rather than malnutrition. The local state dialysis clinic is tragically full of far more heavy than lean poor. (Yes, I grant that arugula costs more than Hostess CupCakes). More suffer from an expensive ingestion of an unlawful drug than the unavailability of a cheap ingestible prescription drug. The parking lots are full of Tahoes and Yukons; the public trolley for the indigent goes by empty.

Keep all that in mind as we enter the most divisive, class-warfare campaign in recent memory. We are living in the upside-down world Orwell wrote about. A president who likes upscale golf a lot, and Martha’s Vineyard even more, who has hired three “fat cat” bankers as his chiefs of staff (how odd that Emanuel and Lew probably both made a lot out of the Freddie/Fannie bubble), and who is the largest recipient of Wall Street cash in history now argues that half of America suffers from the hands of “them.”

Being unequal is not poor. And not having what the “rich” have hardly means having it bad. Sorry, that’s just the way it is.

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1.
proreason

Ah, but it isn’t about helping the poor or leveling social classes at all.

It’s about acquiring power, and neutering one’s enemies. All the other stuff is the con to trick enough people into supporting their masters.

I just kind of like to connect the dots out a bit further than vdh is usually willing to do in print. As an esteemed pundit, he can’t run around calling people communists and radicals and pointing out that almost everything that we object to in society has developed because of marxists poisoning the culture. So sometimes, some of us wild-eyed radical consitution-thumpers do it for him.

I’m relatively poor, but at 25 I had a TV that was far better than anything my parents had until they were in their mid 50s. (In college, I got to use their first color TV, 12 years older than me, and cost $200 less than the TV I bought, and in 1973 money.) The level of material wealth available to even those who are willing to work a little hard (I have two part time jobs, work about 60 hours a week and go to school as well) is insane. And yet, at one of my jobs, half the people there couldn’t contemplate getting a second part time job, and would rather just be lazy and sit on the dole.

Yes, it really is stunning to think about the measurable and immesurable wealth that almost everybody has nowadays. How do you measure having a lifeline to the globe in your pocket? How do you measure knowing that if you have a serious injury, trained specialists will arrive within minutes to save your life? Either one of those, and many other things, would have been worth the crown jewels of England to people a few decades ago.

The entire argument about have’s and have not’s, at least in the USA, would blow the mind of most people in the rest of the world. We’re all rich if we can overcome our tendency to be envious of others. That’s why I say it isn’t about poverty at all. It’s about controlling other people’s lives.

It’s that ridiculous two-choice world that the the 99%ers try to force us into. For a group that doesn’t believe in black and white, right or wrong, good or evil, they sure come up with a lot of us or thems. It’s like saying that either you support Obamacare, or you want your grandmother dead (Oops, I guess they said that one too!).

Personally, if it’s a two-choice world, how about the 53% who pay income tax vs. the 47% who don’t? Where can I get my 53%er bumper sticker?

That statement raises a serious, but never discussed, issue. Assuming that Obama is re-elected and the promised “transformation” (a socialist hell) fully blossoms forth, then what are we going to do about it? Are we going to sit back a simply be glad that “they aren’t overtly killing us….yet”? Are we the generation whose place in history is to be witness and victim to the destruction of the greatest experience in freedom and personal liberty ever known to mankind? I don’t speak of fruitless civil insurrection or a taking of arms but I do wonder if we will have the fortitude to devise ways to make life unbearable for our tormentors. Or, will the comment sections (like this one) be full of discussion about fleeing the country, sending assets elsewhere, hoarding gold, forming black markets, or simply expressing the feeling that you are glad that you may become old and dead before the complete collapse occurs? Last month we lost a neighbor who had gone ashore at Normandy and had been awarded medals for valor. He would only say that what he experienced was absolute horror. Did he and others experience that horror only to have their beloved America sacrificed into a Marxist hellhole? Will we “storm the beach” or just try to keep our heads down and stay out of the way? After all, they aren’t overtly tying to kill us…yet. Do we have it in us to say “no, this isn’t going to happen”? I wonder.

I can’t picture what our reaction to this would be. No idea. I read on the blogs, so many who have guns and ammo and are ready and willing to use them. What does that mean? If I have a gun, how will I know who to shoot? Will the police and the military be my friend or my enemy? Talk of Marshall Law, FEMA camps, NDAA makes this unclear. I hear there could be riots and looting for food and fuel, spreading from the large cities into the countryside. I’m told I should buy food storage, but it sounds like I will have to fight to keep it. OK, I have stockpiled guns, ammo, food, and fuel, enough to share with my family and neighbors as well. When do we start building the forts?

VDH has done well with puncturing the class warfare argument, but there is a danger that is not generally addressed anywhere in the media: that the nuclear threat is getting worse, and we have successfully repressed public awareness of the problem. See this guest blog on my website: http://clarespark.com/2012/01/09/living-in-the-nuclear-age/.

I will take exception to the private jet example for one reason. The use of a private jet gives an owner not only free choice of where to go and how [the hub and spoke system restricting routes and airlines restricting schedules] it also gives freedom from government groping and harassment. Those may be values at least in part offsetting the cost; especially if the jet is belongs to a corporation and its acquisition and operation is deductible and not charged against the flier as personal income.

With that exception, the value of effort, ingenuity, forethought, planning, and character have been devalued in this country. If success is the government’s enemy [and culturally the indicator of someone who is a deserving victim of the less well off]; no one will be willing to work for the public markers of success. I am reminded of the Great Cultural Revolution in China, where those who had signs of the old virtues or indications of actual ability not attributed to ideology were literally victimized. One has to wonder what color Obama’s little book will be.

If Obama gets his second term [probably for life] as seems likely considering that the Republican Elites are determined that Mitt Romney will be the designated loser; it will get worse. Once the confiscation of monetary wealth by various means gains momentum, the relative value of monetary wealth in this country will decline further. There will be choices at that point; accepting impoverishment, converting one’s assets into physical goods that will hold value so long as you can defend them, and moving wealth [and possibly yourself] overseas. Since in the end, anything physical can be confiscated, I am betting on the attractiveness of the last option. And you can bet that currency and travel controls are next in line.

It seems the rich and the poor have worked out a great system. A true symbiosis. In *wink*wink* fashion they appear to resent each other, and keep up appearances of a Have/Have Not society that in fact privileges both and squeezes the middle like wringing a cloth or a sham-WoW!. Those in the middle aspire to a better life, and still adhere to quaint anachronisms such as self reliance, self respect, achievement, accomplishment, along with some moral humility. The rich humbly accept the bad rap they get knowing that those rich among them who’ve paid the indulgences and engaged in the public pieties will be able to deflect and project the bad rap on the “bad rich” cartoon caricature composite that can sway an election their way. The “poor” have hot and cold plumbing, a cell phone/computer/television network, free shelter, and they vehicle of they choice, all subsidized by the state, but then again not, because it’s the political buzzwords “housing”, “food”, “scholarships” that label the government applications that serve as bribery for their votes and subsidize their lifestyle. The price they pay is the unwritten rule that they not try to mix with the rich, not expect to ever renege on their end of the bargain, never contemplate the degree to which they’ve allowed themselves to be corrupted by the state, resent the hand that feeds them some more, and live a rotten cynical life. There are not “two americas” but three, if that’s the way you want to look at it.

Well-said, Mr. Hanson. I’m a recent graduate with no insurance and plenty of student loan debt left to pay off, but for thirty dollars a month I can have the world at my fingertips: Wikipedia, YouTube, Project Gutenberg. The dollar store half a mile from my apartment sells food, clothes, paper goods, and household amenities–surprisingly cheap, too, thanks to those Chinese manufacturers we’re not competing with.

In August, while visiting family in Chicago, I had horrible chest pains. I went to the ER, was seen immediately, and had it taken care of with surprisingly little difficulty. The resulting bill was almost two thousand dollars, steep in my current income bracket, but the hospital let me set up a payment plan that allowed for as little as $15 a month in repayment. This is not a hardship, not for being taken care of in an extremely painful situation.

We don’t live in a divided society. But the grass is always greener on the other side, so something as simple as “he gets a bigger TV than me” is enough to incite class warfare.

“…I heard the usual con ads on the radio. Got problems with the IRS? No problem, we can renegotiate that away. Too much credit card borrowing? No problem…”

Exactly. I love Fox News and the local Angry Guys on AM radio, railing against taxes and entitlements and waste. But when their commercials come on, it’s a whole different universe.

Suddenly, we can all have motorized scooters to take us to Mount Rushmore “at no cost to you!” Or some oafish Jethro and his awful wife smirk about beating the government on their back taxes. Or we’re invited to join a class action suit against a drug company that will end up paying off the law firms, not the victims.

Then O’Reilly or John and Ken in Los Angeles come back on and resume their routine, as if all their rotten advertising wasn’t based on entitlement and waste.

I just heard a news bite about a recent study that shows the average poor family in America lives better than the average middle class family in India. It seems to me that Obama and the Left are clinging to an outdated and increasingly irrelevant inequality/poverty argument simply to bolster their waning power. Dr. Hansen, the examples you cite are right-on and readily observable to more and more of us, but the Left just keeps on ignoring evidence and lying.

What’s so alarming is that the government has created the conditions for mass moral hazard by kicking the pins from under people’s efforts to be self-reliant, thrifty and industrious. As you point out, what kind of fool would work, scrimp and save to send their children to college and exhort them to study and get good grades when the neighbors from Guatemala can send their children for free, with their admittance assured based on skin color and/or surname, not on grades or ability? Or why keep up payments on an underwater mortgage when Obama is floating the idea of homeowner bailout? The city of L.A. is considering stopping the impounding of cars of unlicensed/unregistered/unlicensed drivers because it “unfairly” impacts the poor (read:illegals). This makes fools of everyone who follows the law and spends time and money getting a license, registration and insurance.

We live in San Diego and are constantly confronted with the insanities caused by government policy that ignores or bends laws in order to spread the welcome mat to illegals, while accusing those who object of being “intolerant”. You mention your experiences grocery shopping; I recently stood behind a Mexican woman and her small child at the check stand while she laid out three separate piles of groceries, each topped by a WIC voucher. The complicated transaction took a while and she wound up owing a few cents but she told the checker she didn’t have it. In frustration, he waived her through. As I loaded groceries in my car, I noticed a nice pickup truck parked next to my car. It was full of ladders and tools with a magnetic sign on the side advertising a window cleaning business. The woman and child were in the truck with a man I assumed was her husband. I ask: How likely is it that a self-employed person who’s paid in cash is claiming no income and collecting public assistance?

Dr. Hansen, please keep on pointing out the absurdities and spreading the truth.

My husband is Malaysian. Hardly an impoverished country, but the standard of living we enjoy as two recent college grads with entry level salaries is as high as that of my in-laws, and my father is a mid-level corporate executive with a quite high income relative to his countrymen. We are, as my husband reminds me, filthy stinking rich.

My state is as far away as you can get from yours, but that behavior is rampant here as well. People making good wages working under the table, but then turning around and claiming poverty to receive all the state gov’t handouts. My wife and I both have college educations and work full time, but many of these people have bigger houses, better cars, bigger TV’s, etc. Every now and then the state will announce that they are “cracking down on these type of abuses,” but everyone knows it is just a “wink-wink, nudge-nudge” to make it look like they are doing something.

The Left taps into the basest and most dangerous of emotions – envy – and risks unleashing a monster. Just about anyone, myself included, can find someone else who is better off in some way. But I don’t envy others, because I have pride and humility and gratitude – in knowing that what I do have, I’ve earned. I have the deepest contempt and hatred for politicians that would manipulate this dangerous emotion – for nothing more than their personal power. My wife and I are blessed to live in a place that some would consider priveleged. I prefer thinking that we earned it, through hard work and sacrifice and delayed gratification. For all the hard luck stories the left likes to manipulate, I wish they would show the other side as well – the stories of the sacrifices and denials to themselves made by those they consider better off. They are playing with fire and if they succeed in setting off a conflagration then I will make it my personal business to drag them down into the mud where they want all of us to be. To do my damndest to make sure that in their new collectivist, progressive, totalitarian Amerikka there is no nomenclatura, no privelege for the commisars and apparatchiks, no dachas for the ruling elite. Just pure, unending, burning envy and hatred. Because that is what they are bringing down on all our heads and I will be damned if they get to sit back and live in luxury after bringing down the greatest, the kindest, the most benevolent civilization in all of history.

Thank you for the essay. Your elegant words are a distillation of our angst. I’ll be a cog in the great redistribution machinery for the next several weeks, a tax preparer, working for the most part with the 47% who pay no federal income tax, but get back all their withholding, plus more in the form of child credits, earned income credits. It is depressing but that is the tax code we have in this country. The “makers” won’t appear until the last 3 weeks of tax season.

That’s an absolutely devastating article. Just…wow. It articulates everything people have looked about them and seen, but had difficulty putting into words.

Maybe it’s being somewhere rural and somewhere as upscale as Stanford, and confronting the contradiction so clearly, but this is absolutely what I’ve wanted to say for ages. Excellent!

And (sigh), I noted this sentence within parentheses, and it seems you may have left out the word “not”: you wrote, “it is not just that you will be punished for playing by the rules, but the rules themselves do matter much any more.”

Orwellian, indeed. I wonder if Obama has ever read “1984″?…..if he has, and this is indeed his game, then he’s a very, very dangerous character for us to suffer as our President and Commander in Chief.

Obama must be Impeached…..conviction is something else again. Obama’s hollow, faux, “charismatic” reputation simply must be exposed as trash.

I think Dianna did an excellent job of summing up my thoughts on your very well written article Dr. Hanson.

I, too, drive an Accord that I know is much older than yours, a 1996 EX four door completely loaded, that I purchased from my best friend in 2001 for use as a second car which is now my primary car due to the loss of my company car when I was laid off from my job as a sales manager with a medium sized pharmaceutical company – thank you George W. for your compassionate conservatism and that drug benefit legislation. The only ones who benefited from that boondoggle were Big Pharma and Big Government. However, I digress (to use a worn out phrase)for the reason why I have brought up the car I drive is because the other day my friend, who sold me the car, was riding around with me and he marveled how well the car still drove and that it actually had a smoother ride than his 2008 Vette which he paid $53K for and only has a little over 15,000 miles on the odometer. So, your thoughts and observations driving around California in your Accord perfoming comparative analysis with your car versus expensive cars really does have merit.

I, and I know many others, look forward to reading what you next have in store for us to ponder.

VDH knows that the pension is better than the million saved to live on, because like me, he has one.

Is the point that it is bad that we have this kind of “equality” and we should get rid of it, or that it is good and therefore there is no case for class warfare?

This kind of “equality” came via the things which Obama pushes. So, is the point that now he should stop pushing them because we have arrived at nirvana?

The issue remains as to how we all pay for this and what the 1% should pay as opposed to the rest. Is the answer in the essay somewhere? If so, I missed it.

The common sense response is to vote for Romney and he will make some moderate reductions in the level of growth of entitlements. If we are lucky, business gets better and tax income rises for a while to help pay for it all. Of course, if business picks up significantly before the election, we get more Obama.

“Is the point that it is bad that we have this kind of “equality” and we should get rid of it, or that it is good and therefore there is no case for class warfare?”

Gee, Dwight, I think you may be missing the forest because you are lost in the trees. Consider: The point is the vast gap Obama says there is between the so-called middle class and the so-called rich is actually a rather narrow gap with respect to necessities and nice-to-haves. The wide gap exists in mostly in status items.

You buy a Rolex, whereas for the same purpose I buy a Great Wall Little Red Book watch that keeps time just about as well and looks fairly handsome. Obama basically says he wants everyone to be able to buy the status items too and that you and I should help pay to make this happen. This is quite insane, wouldn’t you agree?

Uh, no. He’s saying that the Rolex folks should pay 5% more in taxes, towards keeping us from going broke. But he really should be following the Bowles Simpson advice on BOTH end, but he is not. I think that Romney might.

No, Dwight. It’s more like this, Victor Davis Hanson is the artist painting a picture of his experienced and learned perspective of reality, the present, and you are the a-hole critic saying he should have used more yellow.

The question remains; do you think it is good that the poor have so much, or the country would be a better place if they were suffering a little (or a lot) more? That has been VDH’s inference in the past; here he lets it remain more ambiguous. Should we freeze programs and benefits where they are right now, or cut them so that the “poor” scammers would not be as well off and the “honest” poor could just plain experience more just suffering? Corrupt people always find ways to get more benefits than they should. It seems that we haven’t found a way to cut it down without “starving’ those who rally need help or hiring more people to search out corruption, before they become too corrupt themselves.

Germany is at least more efficient in dispensing and regulating its benefits; but of course, Germans have far fewer flat screen tv’s per capita.

Dwight, you are such a mole that it is silly. You wrote, “The question remains; do you think it is good that the poor have so much, or the country would be a better place if they were suffering a little (or a lot) more? That has been VDH’s inference in the past”. This has never been inferred by Victor David Hanson. If you really believe that, and you are not a joker, then I think I can rightly make the conclusion that you have some defeatist-jerk-based pathos, at best.

VDH is, in fact, suggesting that the majority of those described as poor in America are not suffering in the severe way that Democrats like to portray. VDH is making a point about recent declarations of class war, that they are majoritively baseless in the cause for quality of living. He is essentially challenging the definition of the term “poor” by explaining that the quality of the life available to the less affluent is of practically the same in any substantial value.

Are there real poor people in America, Dwight? Of course, and as far as I’ve ever read of Professor Hanson’s writing he is always making the case to put in check the abuse of the system by those who don’t need welfare – and who will eventually crash the system, so that those who are in need of it can partake with less obstacles, and more choices.

Anyway, Dwight, I believe this is a long-term project of yours. That you are a liberal who intends to sow seeds of doubt (but more like seeds of idiocy) on anyone on this conservative site. I know the careful taunt of a snake when I see it.

Well kb, one could also say about D-White “I know the ‘careless’ ‘taint’ of a snake when I see it. Taint this, taint that. It’s a mystical “Center”.
Somewhere.

D-White is welded to an Iron Pick It Fence, with the always qualifier “But”. D-White will gin up anything to get his just reward – a glass of greasy gin.

This is what happens when one spends a lifetime in the Tweed Faculty Lounge, and believes in it. So much correcting to do, and seeing so many who flee at the sight of such a monger of a dispirited sense of life. Basically, in D-White World, you are controlled by external forces that you do not understand, cannot change, cannot see clearly, so therefore you plead for yet more control, so that the justification for existence becomes what any stray “consensus” dictates to you. The thinking is settled for you, by the path of least resistance. So what the Hell?

Anyway, those who crawl together… Crawl.

I know, I know you probably scream and cry
That your little world won’t let you go

kb wrote: “Are there real poor people in America, Dwight? Of course, and as far as I’ve ever read of Professor Hanson’s writing he is always making the case to put in check the abuse of the system by those who don’t need welfare – and who will eventually crash the system, so that those who are in need of it can partake with less obstacles, and more choices.”

Let’s put it his way; if you scanned all the VDH articles I have read in the last couple years and had one column where you put a check each time a scammer was mentioned, and another column with checks for references to the rights of the legitimately poor, the first column would have exponentially more checks. VDH is grinding one axe, not the other. Even you would probably have to admit that.

Since, you are a strict logician, Dwight, let’s look at it like this. Has Professor Hanson ever, ever advocated for the abolition of any welfare??? How many check marks for that? Zero. Okay. Let’s continue. What is the point of welfare?… to help people who are in need of financial assistance to meet certain daily requirements for living. If a person makes an argument to rid the system of people who are abusing such a system (people who do not need it) of necessity how (remember, without advocating the abolition of that system), how in your mind, does that equate to that writer advocating for the poor to suffer more?

If there are less people abusing the system, people who do not really need financial assistance according to a value based system of necessity (not status), how does that not mean more resources to help those who really are in need?

I do not believe VDH has ever advocated the absence of welfare. He might opine about how people used to do without it, but you will fail to search and find anywhere where he said these programs should be abolished. Also, it might be implied of VDH that he advocates that welfare should be not so much as to make a receiver live in such a way that there is no incentive to leave welfare, but I would really like to hear your counter to that if that is one of your contentions. Perhaps, you are misunderstanding the his lamentation that people on welfare live pretty damn good is not necessarily contention for the poor, but a lamentation that the system is inherently self-defeating.

Mr. Lucky, it is pretty clever of you to call Dwight D-white, but I don’t know something. Are you much higher than me, and I simply am unable to understand what you mean in that I will scream and cry that my little world won’t let me go, or are you some drunkard retiree of whom I am looking too closely? You see, I am humble. I would like to know what you meant by that.

kb No, I cannot recall a time when he explicitly asked for welfare to be abolished, BUT when one hears the examples of scammers over and over, a reasonable person might ask what he is recommending.

I wrote: “It seems that we haven’t found a way to cut it down without “starving’ those who really need help or hiring more people to search out corruption, before they become too corrupt themselves.

Germany is at least more efficient in dispensing and regulating its benefits; but of course, Germans have far fewer flat screen tv’s per capita.”

To stop abuse, you need more people to investigate, check up, or at a minimum pore over an increasing number of forms; more social workers, welfare cops, and/or bureaucrats. That is the Catch 22. Otherwise, you take the macro “starve the government” approach, “cut spending” and let them all figure out how to get by with less money.

With out more specific recommendations for cures, beyond getting rid of Obama, whom he obviously despises, VDH’s grumblings tend to play into the general resentment for welfare queens or Latinas. So I will turn that on its tail and ask him or you, what DO you propose?

As for Mr Lucky, and his name for me, D-White, the unlucky one has his own private world of images and an endless supply of tunes playing in his head, no matter how jangled, (check out Ophelia on Hamlet) which apparently sustain him in his hours of need. He would not apply his tweedy references to VDH, who has obviously hob-nobbed or grumbled in even higher academic circles than I ever did. He responds with insults, sometimes witty, often malicious, most likely intended to warn people not to take me seriously, but ironically, I am often the only one who knows what the hell he is talking about. ;-)

Excuse the implication that that communique was for you kb. It was entirely for D-White. The snake comment was refomed, and maybe that should not have been done.

D-White understands. At least something. In a way of explaining the D-White tag, and not with the expectation of anyone else understanding, D-White also happens to be a favorite Hip Hop artist. And Ping Pong player. And “Centrist”.

“The question remains; do you think it is good that the poor have so much, or the country would be a better place if they were suffering a little (or a lot) more?”

What are they suffering from Dwight? If you can’t answer that, I can. They are suffering from envy, Dwight. I’ve been there a bit myself. There is really no cure for that particular disease.

Here is another question for you. Because you have a few shreds of honesty left, where is the limit to the Marxist give-aways? At what point will we have we reached a state wherein they will no longer be “suffering?

And still another question. Because the welfare costs must continue to rise with the level of give-aways and expectations of give-aways, which they most certainly will, how much increase in your taxes can you accept each year to help pay for “middle-class”[the poor] satisfaction?

My 2-2-2 plan, albeit originally 4-4-4 posited a 4% tax increase on wage earners over a million and on the fly I’ll make it +2% for those over $250,000. There would be 2-4% in cuts, some of it in the peace dividend; ideally some would come from increased efficiency and eliminating fraud etc., but the question as ever is; how do you do that. Hire some people who get rewarded for exposing fraud and cutting illegal benefits. One would like to give them incentives, but soon THEY would be fraudulently eliminating fraud. People like myself, who got good pension deals, and others who got ridiculously good ones would have to fork over a few more bucks both with means-tested medicare coverage. Obama claims that he will consolidate some parts of the government and save several billion. Generally following the Simpson – Bowles recommendations would be good.

Ah the audacity of fixed numbers to ensure inequality under the tax laws. Gays demand the “right” to marry using the principle of equality of treatment under the law. The Marxists in government support them in this argument. So do you. You favor inequality under the tax law using the highly scientific[?] annual income numbers of $250K and $1mil to identify the targets singled out to be dis-equalized under the tax laws. I am disappointed in your adoption of this Obametric idiocy. As I have admitted before, you show flashes of honesty and logic, but, as with all the good leftists, soon emotions take control.

Suppose all of your suggestions were to be adopted, would this then end the government’s drive for more and more “leveling of the playing field” and “fairness”? Would the middle class and those who pretend to representing them then be content? No. No they would not. Such an idea is ridiculous.

As for the numbers, to have a plan, you have to have numbers and cut-offs. It is rather weird for you to be talking about my emotions taking control, when I am giving you hard (if pulled out of my butt) numbers and you are the one emoting. The principle of the graduated income tax has been established for some time, long before anyone had ever hear of Obama, or me or you, for that matter.

There is in fact one significant difference between your Honda and the BMW that was in front of you. Your Honda is more reliable.

On the corporate jet issue: The freedom from govt. harassment at their security checks is of incalculable value. Fortunately, one does not have to be super rich and have a $20 mil jet, for in many cases a much cheaper Cessna will do. I have a 30 year old plane that can beat airliners’ door to door times on trips up to 600 miles, more if the airline trip requires a change of planes. I am not rich. My plane is worth about the same as your Honda.

Absolutely, Robert! I have a 1948 Stinson 108 (4-place, 120 mph) and it beats the airlines hands-down. I’ve flown from OKC to West Palm Beach FL twice, one time returning via Nag’s Head, NC. As long as you’ve allowed time in your schedule for Mother Nature’s games, there’s no better way to travel. Plus you meet some great folks and see this beautiful country from a unique perspective.

Class warfare is the small c communists looking for a way to create new “wedge” issues that divide us. They have no interest in a United…States.

They would like the People’s Humble Republic of America. All property is theft. The state provides. We are not “nationalistic”, but world-centered.

We all contribute everything, except for the takers, who parcel out the crumbs of inferiority, to the permanently inferior. Drones serving the queen bee.

Competition is eliminated, being “better” than someone else is frowned upon, achievement is only by state behemoth’s central planning goals.

As for possessions…I suppose leftists may want their own planes, that way they can grope themselves, instead of having an $8 dollar an hour assembly line fondler do it for them.

As for cars, I have had a Ford Taurus and an Avalon…both nice, working, humble cars. But, unless I wanted to turn myself into a frittata, I probably would not buy the Workers Party special…the Re-Volt.

As for the the system itself…it’s being “gamed” so virulently…that it is near collapse. There are so many federal workers…who are in the federal Workers Party…that it’s a sinkhole where the gamers are gaming themselves.

One woman retired on Monday, got a payment of $400k and came back to work on Tuesday. That’s ok. We simply have to raise the debt ceiling and the “gamers” can X-box to the next level of government waste, fraud, corruption and graft.

We can possibly win the election and downsize the government, but since almost all the hires have been (for instance in the DOJ) hard line leftists wanting to take down the system, they will ALL file lawsuits for “discrimination” in the workplace.

Trying to conspire to tear down capitalism gives new meaning to “suspect class”, but unfortunately, the courts won’t recognize it…heck, most American voters don’t recognize it.

In the end, we will continue to be “gamed”, until we are gamed out of existence. The Democratic Party and their propaganda machine will continue to push “wedge” issues and class warfare. The Republicans will stumble, bumble and fumble along…incapable of confronting the fraud and too timid to want to…for fear of being called “McCarthy”.

Charles Krauthammer says that given the choice between incompetence and conspiracy, he always chooses incompetence as the answer. That works.

Except when there is a conspiracy. With nobody willing to choose that for fear of “wearing a tinfoil hat”…when the conspiracy comes…nobody says a peep. Even if all the evidence points to a conspiracy….let’s keep saying it’s incompetence. That way, it’s not nearly as scary. And we can take half measures and spout empty rhetoric complaints about how unfair it all is, if ONLY the small c communists were competent enough to see things more clearly.

The thing about calling it incompetence versus conspiracy is how we can more easily absolve ourselves of having to go after them as criminals in the case of the latter; in the case of the former, we can just feel sorry for them.

Obama should be facing impeachment proceedings, but alas he is not because people can get away with playing with semantics.

“The Republicans will stumble, bumble and fumble along…incapable of confronting the fraud and too timid to want to…for fear of being called “McCarthy”.

Many people believe Obama is stupid because almost all of his policies are detrimental to the nation. In fact, if you believe as I do, that his Marxist policies of redistribution have been an astonishing success in carrying out his intentions, we can lay that arguement to rest.

The argument about left and right is a parallel situation. Rather than being “incapable, timid and fearful “of being called McCarthy”, is it not reasonable to assume that many if not most of those of the Loyal Opposition party are co-conspirators in a criminal enterprise which in today’s world is the game of covet your neighbors stuff that politics has become in order to buy votes and remain in the shrinking food chain of taxpayer’s money?

Perhaps what many of Romney’s detractors fear most is that an honest man might become President of the United States. And that isn’t about to happen, right?

HOWARD BEAL LIVES AGAIN. I appreciate the outrage Dr VDH but you might just suffer the fate of Howard. I hear that you are “mad as hell” but when will you
“not take it amy more” ? A question for us all.

So what is the vast advantage of having more than someone else that so obsesses this administration, as if inequality translates into poverty?

Class warfare. Without engendering class warfare and hurling accusations of racism, this particular crop of democrats has nothing.

That John Edwards/Obama style shtick falls flat & is embarrassingly transparent, particularly when one stacks such yappers’ personal lives against their rhetoric.

Recently, Rush Limbaugh made the harsh point that Michelle and Barack, given their philosophy & orientation, feel entitled themselves to live high on the hog off the public dole.

My model for the absurdity of some government regime trying its hand at leveling some imaginary playing field is New Orleans, post Katrina, and reports of “victims” using their prepaid FEMA cards to purchase designer bags and breast enhancement surgeries.

Money, gone.

I’ve never envied “the rich”, maybe that comes, in part, from spending some of my formative years in Newport Beach and observing that hysteria and dysfunction did not respect financial differences between families.

It’s just the way that some people are. I don’t know how to explain them. Someone close to me is the same way. If I make the point that difference in income is irrelevant in regards to quality of life, so long as quality of life is not dismal it has no effect. The person will only see their own struggle, and justify their want in contrast to how much the rich do not struggle. Because, you see, in America, we are all equal by mandate, and why should a person struggle, while others have no concept of this type of living. Someone must be brought down, or someone must be brought up. I suppose you can see it as the result of the disconnect from the words of the Declaration of Independence that are so ingrained into American thinking, “All men are created equal”, and the important part that is not understood, remembered, or cared about, and creates the disconnect, “by their Creator”. When people think that government mandates equality it alters perception. To make matters far worse we also having a growing atheist population. They play no small part in this.

As always, your point is well made professor. If a watch can keep time, what good is the gold in the band?

But just as a footnote, true, the $1,200 men’s suit isn’t twice as good as the $600 one and the $2,000 speaker system isn’t twice as good as the $1,000.

That being said, there is a law of diminishing returns and if you can demonstrate in any way that your product is a little better than someone else’s, you can charge any amount for that difference. The market will judge the worth.

It’s really not about the value of a thing that VDH is talking about, I believe. He is saying that the rich are paying in dividends for the status symbol they want to maintain, and his clarion is for the poor to have brains enough, sense enough, to not get greedy for what is surely vice, and superficiality. That is true empowerment for the poor – that they feel no need, no want to impress the rich, to fool themselves, to sell their souls, minds, and hearts. Professor Hanson, in my opinion, makes the only case that can possibly win – for people to wisen up. Sadly, sadly, how hokey does that sound?

The rich man and the poor man meet face to face, and God has made them both.
.

Look at things from the other side. If a guy is filthy rich and wants to show off his status, what the heck is he to do, when the poorest slob on the street can have goodies just about as good as his? Hmm. I foresee a resurgence in patronage of artists and composers; as several SF writers have predicted, hand-made quality is now the best up-scale indicator.

No. That’s the whole point. If the “poor” stay on the path they are on they will tear down their own cities in a fit of stupidity, and greed. VDH’s advice, I believe, is simply for the poor “activists” in America to buck up, and realize the benefit they already reap in their reality: to stop looking for alms from the Government and Democrats. But when I say it like that it is obvious that liberals will take it for condescension. What other way is there to put it?

I was reading De Tocqueville’s Reflections on the Old Regime and the Revolution last night and came across an interesting observation-in despotism everyone is equal.

I recommend the book to anyone who wishes to understand the contemporary dictatorships of the bureaucrat in west Europe (aka welfare states), and the type of society Obama and his minions wish to set up here. He paints a picture of a society divided into castes, with no public spirit, where everyone is dependent on knowing someone to help him avoid the mishmash of contradicting and incomprehensible laws; quit similar to being given exceptions from Obamacare.

Sounds to me that exemptions from “ObamaCare” would be a violation of the constitution of equal protection under the law, hmmm wonder how a legal mind would work at that for us, yep it is against “equal protection” kind of like separation of Church and State I know it is somewhere in the “Living Constitution“!

Just putting it out there for consideration! There are sometimes small minded people with great minded ideas as a solution it is time to test the mettle of the Supreme Court or SCOTUS!

My immediate reaction to your latest litany of lamentations is the flashing in mind of “It’s okay, ma, I’m only dyin’?

Yes, America IS dying.

Another Bob Dylan snippet, which has always served me, also seems quite appropriate for all the already too fat and otherwise too “prosperous” Americans—

“When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.”

My economics education, at UCSB no less, somehow snuck into my mind—the only true law could well be that of the intersection of supply and demand.

I was wondering about how it would apply to STUPIDITY.

There’s certainly a vast supply of THAT!

Perhaps the cleverest indoctrination was the spreading of the “wealth” known as “self esteem”. Why, everybody’s a genius, when it comes to THAT!

I think of it as stupid to the stupid power, on into exponential infinity. When truly stupid people have high self-esteem, why it’s impossible to make them aware of THAT!

So, what’s the universe to do, to wake such dummies up?

How about let them indulge their stupidity, physically, emotionally and even mentally? What percentage of Americans are grossly, bodily, STUPIDLY fat or obese, again? How many of us get off on emotional-sexual “soap operas”, of all varieties from TV and movies, to our personal lives? And, of course, these Internet days, why the burgeoning blogosphere is loaded with STUPID faux intellectuals, as well as all the other venues for such people.

The thought that the con artists will run out of marks bleeds into the STUPIDITY dam bursting, in my mind’s eye.

Maybe I’m experientially ruined, in that at near 70 years of age, after three or four years of regularly enjoying my local YMCA, seeing and being around so many old and fat people has made me a cynic. But, I don’t think so. Even too many of the youngsters go from pudgy tykes to fatso teenagers, right before my eyes! And, random visits to a local mall confirm the STUPID FAT vision.

Every week in our local left of center “it’s the thought that counts” newspaper the editors let 16 and 17 year olds in high school posit their vast wisdom about current events. The three students selected are from different local high schools and presumeably top of the line students. This week it was about fairness and the 1% vs the 99%.

I was informed by Suzie at Central High that unfairness is inherent in a capitalist economy. She opined that in order to level the field it is always necessary for the government to keep a close eye on those who would attempt to take more than their fair share, while providing sustinence for those who cannot fend for themselves in an unfair world.

And to think she learned all these healing and feeling thoughts on my dime.

Still Young David of Northern High School said that the whole occupy movement is foolish and that the 99%/1% charade was one more stop toward a socialist state.

I like David. Now that was worth the dime. I hope there are more David’s here in the U.S.A. but my hopes diminih when every few days/weeks Pres. O pronounces his next lawless edict and no one seems to notice or question or more likely just take a big yawn and move along.

Gosh I hope there is a giant silent majority out there that I don’t know about.

Can the editors of your “local left of center” rag define what they mean by “fairness” in twenty-five words or less? No, they can’t; not in any honest and consistent manner, anyway. Those editors almost certainly pride themselves in being among the 1% of the community’s opinion-makers. Likely they also consider themselves among the community’s most intelligent, most cultured, and most tasteful. “Fairness” by whatever definition they truly hold requires their kind of 1% to be leveled too but those editors keep that hush-hush, don’t they?

I was informed by Suzie at Central High that unfairness is inherent in a capitalist economy.

“Unfairness” (whatever that is) is inherent in any economy – duh.

Still Young David of Northern High School said that the whole occupy movement is foolish and that the 99%/1% charade was one more stop toward a socialist state.

I’m one of those cynics who believes that the “Occupy” movement was cooked up in the White House basement by a cabal of Democratic operatives, labor leaders and media types. And it worked! The divisive war cry against the “1%” is intellectuallly bankrupt but emotionally powerful on the most feral psychological level. Envy and jealousy are powerful motivators and the progenitors of “OWS” have successfully tapped into these less-than-admirable human qualities.

But what is the end-game in all of this? To me it appears simple. The Tea Party and principled conservatives successfully (for a time) made the question of wholesale government insolvency an issue that nobody (for a time) could ignore. Of course nothing really got accomplished did it? We are now over fifteen trillion in debt and fifty cents out of every dollar that the federal government spends represents borrowed money. Gigantic entitlement programs and byzantine bureaucracies remain untouched.

Yet there remains the possiblity that they MIGHT be. “OWS” was that most unusual of political developments – A radical protest movement in defense of the status quo. Lenin was a pretty well-credentialed radical but he always asked the same question when faced with a politcal development – “Who Benefits?” The beneficiaries of OWS are government bureaucrats, entrenced officials, program wonks and that narrow cadre of Democratic supporters who always benefit when resources are transferred from the private sector to government. We could execute the top one thousand earners in the U.S. and confiscate their estates a’la Henry VIII dissoving the monastaries. Yet that still would’nt put a dent in our ongoing fiscal crisis. That however is not the point. The point is to feed the black beast of class resentment and steer it in such a way that benefits our entrenced professional political classes.

I like your run down on OWS. In relationship to poverty, they seem to be the “haves” who want more. Their protest of ‘greed’ is amazingly hypocritical, however, I wonder why they left out the 6 other deadly sins of pride, lust, wrath, envy, and gluttony. Surely those human conditions are protestable.

Who cares? Obviously Mr. Obama cares. My own mother, on oxygen and social security, told me that Mr. Obama personally lowered her monthly outgo by lowering the cost of her oxygen tanks by TWENTY DOLLARS. One doesn’t have to rely on getting all those $20 bills sent in for re-election when one can use the governments money to buy votes. When I tried to tell her that once ObamaCare is fully implemented, she won’t have access to many of the same options she has now, and that her costs will soar, she laughed and said Mr. Obama says the republicans want to cut her social security and medicare by 50%.
When you tell MENSA members who are college students that we cannot afford for everyone to go to college, nor can a college degree have any meaning if everyone does, they put their personal desires ahead of any logic or reason and tell you that Mr. Obama loves loves loves them and will help make college cheap and affordable. Cheap yes. But affordable depends on who is paying.
When you tell the McDonalds employee that they cannot become rich by sticking it to the rich, they will tell you that a payroll tax (and they don’t pay IRS anyway) is what we need instead of tax breaks for the rich. See, it doesn’t matter if they improve their lives, it only matters that someone else isn’t getting something that they think ‘belongs’ to them. After all, aren’t they the ones who created this country?
In the Obama world, we are all animals on the farm and hoping the mules help the pigs take over.

Try standing in line of your local supermarket, the person ahead buys a large mass and variety of groceries. They swipe a card that at one time required stamps but now, for convenience, allows a certain amount of respectability. When informed that certain items of their bounty must actually be paid for, without hesitation and with some élan promptly produce a Gold American Express card. We do not caricature the poor, we shake our heads in disbelief or just how corrupt and unmanageable this country is becoming.

“Try charging a small, nominal fee for any of that and watch the numbers drop. The poor will always be with you… especially if you subsidize them.”

I had an interesting experience with the same thing. Years ago, I worked in Saudi Arabia and lived on a modern, western compound with about a thousand employees and their families. The compound had a small clinic staffed by an American MD and a PA and a couple of nurses – mainly to deal with minor issues. The Docs were my dinner companions every night and one of their complaints was that they were literally overwhelmed by mothers bringing their children for all variety of bumps and scrapes and minor ailments. The compound management eventually put a nominal fee (5 rials – about $1.75) on using the clinic and immediately the visits dropped by 90%. Apparently, lots of the wives on the compound were using the clinic recreationally – is all I can imagine.
Both my sisters are ER nurses in big city hospitals and they tell me horror stories of abuse – people coming in ambulances to be treated for sore throats – being one of the more common stories. I know that by law hospitals have to treat people but there ought to be a nominal fee…I don’t know, ten bucks, maybe twenty on use of the emergency room. I guarantee it would cut down on a lot of the traffic and that small an amount would be hard for the Democrat whoremongers to demagogue. It’d be worth a try at least.

“The compound management eventually put a nominal fee (5 rials – about $1.75) on using the clinic and immediately the visits dropped by 90%.”

I live in socialist country (Germany) and about a decade ago they decided to charge 10 Euros for a visit. If multipe visits were required for the same illness, that was waved of course. After the first year the visits dropped by 25%.

The heavy payroll deductions remind you monthly that health care isn’t “free” no matter what the socialists say or simply put, “socialist medicine is great… as long as you don’t get ill.”

A friend of mine gets free health care (no co-pays) here in Australia because he is on a disability pension (anxiety and depression issues). I took him out for dinner one night and he had a sticking plaster on his forehead. He peeled it off and told me he had tripped and cut his head, and asked “do you think I need stitches? Should I go to the doctor tomorrow?”

Ok, scalp wounds can be nasty but it had stopped bleeding hours before so I just laughed and asked if he’d cleaned it. Yes, disinfectant, iodine, and all that stuff. So I said no, you must be joking.

He went anyway. The doctor told him the same thing. There’s barely a scar.

Although I have also visited the other worldly expensive Stanford shopping center (and campus, Palo Alto, etc., a step kid goes there) I am more like Victor than the rich. I also shop weekly at my amazing local Walmart. I grew up in a town of 400 and still work with mostly with my hands. Despite this, I also just visited the Sistine Chapel in Italy without paying a cent. Check out this totally amazing video:

Well, now I have seen the Michelangelo’s famous God touching Adam painting in context, up close and without ever leaving my portable laptop. Why would I need to go there now? In spite of our Marxist POTUS and our ever growing insane govt. what a wonderful time to live. Anyone know of any similar 3D video’s of Tuscany? I know I can get the wine and bread at my local supermarket.

Tom, that’s lovely. You’re a wise man. My husband and I got into our Florida rental van this morning. It’s a different make than the one at home.

I heard myself saying . . ” I don’t like the way this van handles, the configuration of the brake and gas pedals . . they’re just not right . . and a black car in Florida!?”

I swear to God. I think one of my ancestors slapped me aside the head. I sat up straight, turned to my husband and apologized to him, the high-tech dashboard, the science and ingenuity and the country that made this dream machine possible . . . to my ancestors who would have knelt in disbelief before it, and in case he was listening – almighty God.

Dr. Hanson,
I enjoyed your examples of the many ways in which wealth can be measured. It makes me feel better about my circumstances!
Here is a more specific one to add to your list. (It is hard to give and receive compliments, so we are just going to have to suffer through). Combined with the internet, my blue-collar-wage purchased laptop has given me easy access to the vast amount of writing and thinking that you do. As a result, I have a much greater understanding of the world and an infinitely richer life. Thank you!

Those Hostess products would taste so much better if we could eliminate overpaid American union workers. Better to use illegal labor that requires no benefits (upfront, only from taxpayers). Better yet import those tasty treats baked in Asian sweatshops by child labor. American workers can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, go back to school to ready themselves for work at the latest innovative social networking company.

I’m with you on that new car vs old car thing. My 12 YO truck gets me where I am going. Helps me get my groceries home from Costco, lumber for my fence from the lumber yard AND my teen age boys can drive it with out too much angst on my part. With the money I save from those new car payments, I plunk in to the kids education fund and I can send money to my favorite charities. My local parish, MIC, and Catholic Relief Services make much better use of my money than some car finance company.

Beautiful, disturbing essay, and parallels my own observations. My alternate take on things is that many people have realized that we only get these few years on Earth, and that given the current menu of economic carrots and sticks, grab all you can any way that you can. Combine that with a media and culture which teaches that nirvana comes with lots of money spent on the correct extravagant things, and it becomes a free-for-all at the malls and in the streets. Note how so many movies and video games extol the gangster life, and the next step is a Rodney King sort of rioting and stealing. We are collectively just around the corner from that sort of thing on a widespread scale, IMO. Economic constructs of carrots and sticks determine utterly predictable behavior. Throw in the adolescent “Lord of the Flies” tendencies that lie just under the surface and are themselves promoted, and the sad result cannot only be predicted, but should be expected.

I raise a few cattle. Most of the year they are self-sufficient, grazing and watering at the irrigation ditch and generally content.

This time of the year I start to feed them hay, they quickly lose interest in grazing…although there is till grass in the pasture, instead they stand at the fence and wait for their handout of hay twice a day..

Just a comment in the statement by VSH regarding the various items being sold
in Nordstroms for $300 Perhaps the same items in Wal-Mart
for much less.
I insured a warehouse operation in Jersey City,NJ.
The owner was. A Mexican American and ran a fleet if rractor trailers(25) from
Port Newark container terminal to his warehouse in Jersey City.
Once the containers were unloaded at the warehouse
his staff of approximately 30-50 Mexican American women
would unpack, sort and iron all the items of clothing.
They then attached various labels depending on the stores they were going to
JC Penny, Macy’s , Lord & Taylor, etc etc – same cloths different pricing tix and store labels!
You just can’t make this stuff up!!
Griff

Obama is a pigeon feeder. He knows that they are easy to attract, breed fast, and and become totally dependent. The nesting and sanitation habits are comparable, also.
As Margaret Thatcher said; “At some point, you run out of other people’s money”.
Obama is displaying what a cheap dictator he really is. Preaching sacrifice while living lavishly and not sacrificing an iota of his own. There are so many dictators to compare him to, I’ll not try to list any. They are very well known.

This essay could be a movie script. All that’s missing is the music. What do you suggest, Dr. Hanson?

I’d argue that life is tough in a relative way no matter where you are presently. But, at the same time to allow yourself to behave as though you have no honor, “IS” beyond the pale. Who you are has nothing to do with WHAT you have.

Abraham Lincoln. Do I need to say more?

We all have dignity, if we allow ourselves to. It’s not difficult. Unless you allow your self to wallow in the poisonous self pity, animus, envy or other self destructive small minded thoughts that destroy men (and women).

I can’t give you your own self respect or dignity. But, as I see regularly from the left, that I must not only attempt to do just that, I must do so at the sacrifice of my own dignity.

For a president of the most powerful nation on earth (when he took office, any way) to appeal to the lowest common denominator of human nature, is an appalling and profoundly disappointing and even highly embarrassing behavior that should be beneath the office. Like not wearing a tie or putting his feet up on the furniture, small things that belie the character of the boy that hides the man.

What separates the poor from the affluent these days is not so much material goods, but Bildung (a German word for education that implies deep knowledge of a subject or profession). We are a society of the dumb and the knowledgeable.

By the way, I’ve been to Tuscany, and I’ve experienced it on the internet. Going there in person is a much superior experience.

simply put its the politics of envy. Very few people NEED for anything. What happenes is that power seekers use wealth redistribution to create an ‘envy class’ of people. people who no matter what they have, or get are never satisfied and no matter what opportunities are thanded to them are, ‘opressed victims’ all because their neighbor has a trinket they want. we can call it marxism or socialism or bob, but its not new and infact goes back to the very beginning where the leaders of tribes gained more power by giving away more, and the kings could quell a rebellion and enslave their people by simply throwing loaves of bread out to the waiting masses. they take from the haves and give to the wants to gain power, pretty soon the ‘haves’ figure out that it does not pay to work if you have to give away your money to the wants and stop. thats how you create an envy class followed by a slave class. its amazing how many people will throw themselves in to a slaves prision, if the cage is guilded enough!

Another must-read from Dr. Hanson. Thanks to Capitalism, the poorest 5% in the USA are wealthier than 2/3rds of the world’s population. But we seem determined to kill the goose that has laid our golden eggs. Robert A. Heinlein wrote: “Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded–here and there, now and then–are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as ‘bad luck.’” We are about to have a lot of “bad luck.” I fear fiscal collapse followed by social and political collapse. I will link to this from my Old Jarhead blog.

Robert A. Hall
Author: The Coming Collapse of the American Republic
All royalties go to help wounded veterans
For a free PDF of my book, write tartanmarine(at)gmail.com

“Fresno has just announced that its latest lawsuit settlement has pretty much exhausted the city’s self-insured fund for the year”

I know it’s late to say this, but I am frankly appalled by this.

From what I can tell, Fresno’s latest, biggest lawsuit settlement is for the wrongful death of Steven Vargas, a 32 year old father of five who was shot by a police officer in 2009. Furthermore, the jury which would have been in charge of awarding damages had there not been a settlement was not going to award any punitive damages; any jury award would have been based solely on the income that Vargas would have earned had he lived.

Presumably, the city settled for 1.3 million because it thought that a jury award would have been as large or larger.

So, on what grounds do you object to the settlement? Do you think that Vargas would have earned less money? Or do you think that, in tough economic times the government should not have to compensate people when it wrongfully deprives a family of one of their main sources of income (I know that’s a callous way to phrase that, and I apologize, but again, the city of Fresno was only liable for the costs of replacing that lost income, not for any other pain and suffering)? Do you believe that it is frivolous to sue the government when they shoot your unarmed husband to death? If so, what circumstances would it be permissible to sue under? Or do you believe that the government should never have any liability for wrongful death under any circumstances?

It’s easy to inveigh against lawsuits and settlements in the abstract, but when you actually look at the details, many lawsuits have merits. The fact that a settlement is large does not make the underlying suit frivolous.

If you believe that the city should have no liability for Vargas’ death, you should own that opinion and explain why you think that. I am very unhappy that instead you left the reason for the lawsuit vague so you could make insinuations that it was somehow frivolous.

People who engage in “Richie Rich” thinking about great wealth and obsess over the status goods you can buy with it, miss the advantages of wealth.

One, wealth frees you from worrying about paying for health care and disability.

Two, it gives you more control over the use of your time. You don’t have to go to a job you hate every day; instead you sleep in and go to Fight Club every night if you choose.

Three, related to two, it allows you to live according to natural cycles. You can sleep when you feel sleepy, wake up when you want to wake up, eat when you feel hungry and so forth. In other words, you don’t have to force your body to live according to artificial time keeping and depend on caffeine and other stimulants to stay awake for your boss’s convenience.

And four, wealth gives you the means to remove yourself and the people you care about from harm’s way. We saw a complete absence of this power in New Orleans a few years ago.

This essay does make a great case for the relative differences in goods and services. The differences between Starbucks and McDonald’s coffee is not worth the price difference. So goods and services are delivered cheaply to the poorest, who live a materially good life here. Even the homeless in most places can find a place to lie their heads, a shower, meals and company, even if it is living under a train track elevation, a building overhang or on a steam grate.

The problem is one of geographic connection. In most cities and communities, we have socially and economically segregated: socially in that we chose to live amoung those who think and believe what we do and economically in that they’re in our income bracket. Some communities do not want their service workers to live there, so they zone or try to in order to eliminate neighborhoods.

The effect of this geographic isolation or separation is that the duties, responsibilities and obligations one has to another is radically changed. It becomes impersonal. Living within a few blocks on one another and coming from similar backgrounds produced human bonds that bloviating about class warfare could not convince. Today however, that the classes are separated makes such propaganda easier to believe or to follow. Like it is hard to be prejudiced when you know someone from another race, religion, etc, conversely it is easy to believe a caricature of the rich.

Unfortunately, the Constitution doesn’t stipulate that a president has to give a damn for and understand his country, be honest with voters, or have more class than an Occupy Wall Streeter.

College and law school grad, Chicago community organizer, absentee Illinois state senator, constitutional scholar, brief United States senator, current commander-in-chief of our armed forces, and leader of the Free World, Barack Hussein Obama, is devoid of any of those attributes.

He has been acclaimed as the most brilliant chief executive to ever establish residence in the White House despite the fact he is frequently reduced to a gaffe-prone, inarticulate gasbag when his trusty teleprompters aren’t around and he considers it panache to discuss dog droppings.

Go figure.

President George W. Bush was also known to put his foot in his mouth and his “Bushisms” are still lame comic fodder for Leno and Letterman but Bush’s gaffes don’t compare with Obama’s.

The president’s frequent excursions into foolery and foolishness have often been documented here and in the rest of the conservative blogosphere even if the MSM pretends they never happened.

There is no need to elaborate on Obama’s 57 states, his reference to “corpsemen,” his inability to speak Austrian, his confusing Jews with janitors and living versus dead Medal of Honors winners, his “intellectual stammering,” or the whole host of his other foul-ups.

They have become the stuff of legend, legendary gaffery which future liberal historians will someday discover and dismiss as vile, misleading partisan claptrap just as Mrs. Obama has dismissed the unflattering revelations of Jodi Kantor in The Obamas.

Two new examples of “misleading partisan claptrap” have recently emerged.

Neither is of monumental significance in the greater scheme of presidential politics although both provide great insight into our beloved leader.

One reveals a heretofore-unknown and shocking facet of Barack Obama’s life, the other displays what most Obamian critics have long known–that he sorely lacks both discretion and class.